“Come on in. The first class is free. Hopefully, I’ll motivate you.” – Coss Marte, Fitness Instructor.
As we dive into the new year, and people vow to lose weight or participate in Dry January, Coss Marte, founder of New York City’s three-story health and wellness mecca ConBud dispensary and ConBody gym on the Lower East Side, wants to motivate his people.
Growing up playing in Forsyth Park back when there was no soccer field and the area was mostly concrete, shots would pop off between dealers, and teenagers hung around corners where heroin was sold openly. Marte was formerly incarcerated for selling cannabis and, as he puts it, “doing dumb shit.” After his release, he began hosting workout classes in a local park alongside elderly Chinese residents practicing Tai Chi.
Marte eventually graduated to renting studio space in his neighborhood under his mother’s watchful eye. She still lives nearby. These days, the Lower East Side is heavily gentrified, filled with college students, coffee shops, and boutique hotels. Used to building things himself and without the backing of major investors, Marte relies on word of mouth rather than paying for booth space at trade shows.
“That concrete outdoor space became my first fitness and entrepreneur space. We didn’t have a permit. We were just trying to get people to show up at a certain time. But I started getting really cold, and I realized we needed an indoor space.”
After settling into his current indoor gym on the second floor, Marte credits “mainly frustration and discrimination” for expanding into cannabis. He now operates three dispensaries across New York City. In addition to the Lower East Side location, there are two in the Bronx, including one near Yankee Stadium.
To qualify for a social equity cannabis license in …
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Author: Sara Brittany Somerset / High Times
